Glenn Greenwald agrees with me that the Right Wing Howler Monkey Media Chorus attacks on Obama’s legitimacy have less to do with race and more to do with their refusal to admit that anyone but themselves are fit to rule. We went through exactly the same sort of paranoid, delusional idiocy while Bill Clinton was president. Certainly, there is a racist element out there that despises Obama for daring to be a black man in power, but I feel certain there are more people who hate him for being a Democrat than there are those who hate him for being black.

I agree. I didn’t think Carter’s comments were helpful at all–in fact everything he says these days seems to come from further and further out of left field–but the fact remains that the GOP rank and file are simply at their nastiest when they’re out of power. It’s like they don’t even feel the Democrats have a right to exist, much less hold office. There are a few honest ones who recognize why they lost power and why they don’t deserve to hold it again until they get their act together, but they’re too few to make a difference. As usual, I feel the nation is ill-served by its two dinosauric political parties, but I do give the president and the Democrats credit for honestly trying to tackle some serious problems in the wake of a disastrous presidency. Obama is the first president in my lifetime who I believe is genuinely serious about what he says and is honestly trying to DO what he said he would do.